So ... what's wrong with THIS picture?

Exactly!

"Socialism" is NOT a synonym for civilized cooperation. (I really like Deval Patrick!)

The Daily Show - Deval Patrick
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

For all my whiny, snarky, fearful, and fussy friends

I TOLD you happy was better than snarky! I knew it! I just knew it! Happy is not stupid! Happy is smart, and healthy, and a genuine fountain of youth.

Don't worry! Be happy!

Cultivate adaptive competence instead of whining!

See this woman? She's one hundred and NINE years old! She still lives in her own home. She's sharp as a tack, and she knows what she wants and why she wants it.

You don't get to be 109 without life hurling a few curveballs at you, and Reichert has had more than her share: bereavement, gender discrimination, medical issues. And after each, she dusts herself off and moves on.

Go here - read Dr. Mark Lach's report about this. Especially if you're afraid of old age.

What's Wrong with our Food?

Here it is. In less than nineteen minutes, a clear and concise presentation delineating many of the reasons I've got a Health Hunter category in my writing on this blog. Go, Robyn O'Brien!

How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick: A Doctor Talks about Afghan people, Inuits, and adipose fat that encases our organs

"Your body will forgive you for eating almost anything if you move enough."

In an essay published last November in Canada's Maisonneuve journal, physician Kevin Patterson described his experiences working as an internist-intensivist at the Canadian Combat Surgical Hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Crimes Against Humanity

I am in my office, which is above the living room in my little house. The NewsHour is playing, and the menfolk are listening to a report about software

designed to safely store data about torture, murder, killings and other human rights abuses in countries around the world. It's meant to help human rights workers who are collecting that information and use it to document what went on -- or is going on -- in nations run by brutal dictators who might eventually be brought to justice.

It's pretty ingenious stuff, and my hat's off to the guy who invented this modern tool of resistance. His name is Jim Fruchterman - here he is, talking about this:


This is the sort of story that gives me great hope. In the same world that holds brutal dictators and their victims, there are men like this, asking themselves, What could I do with what I have that just might make this humanitarian problem less powerful? How can I help? I want to choose sides, and not just agree with the good, but also work for the good.

Tonight, when I was listening to the story from up here in my office, I heard the phrase of accusation, "crimes against humanity." That phrase came into being in the war-torn, modernizing, machine-making, bomb-dropping 20th century. That has a beautiful and grotesque irony to it, don't you think? What we did to each other became so enormous that we made a phrase to describe it. We, the people of the planet who decried the horrors of the World Wars, took a stand. There is no "us" and "them" at a certain point, we said. At that point, we're all us. Do that to them, we said, and you have done it to everyone.

Do not play this video if there are children nearby. This is the short French documentary Night and Fog. I have seen few things in my life more chilling.
Night and Fog Rare Holocaust Footage

There is no "us" and "them."

During this school year, I have read for a course in The Literature of Resistance. The above film was one of the documentary genre in History of Film. Over and over, the awareness has come to me, in class, and at work, and at prayer. There is no "us" and "them." All humans are included in the "humanity" against which crimes ought not to be committed.

There are a lot of reasons why I will always vote for public parks, public schools, public safety, public roads, and public transportation. These are the things we expect to find in a modern country, where there are more than enough resources for such things. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about health care - public, private, insured, uninsured, fee-for-service, wellness, crisis management, complementary, human-centered ... thousands of billing codes ... people sitting in their cars in the parking lot outside the emergency room, wondering how they will pay for it if they go in ... and how much more sense it would make, fiscally and practically, if we did not have such a disjointed and scattered way of going about it.

It's not a simple problem to solve, but we need to solve it. We need to solve it not only because we're throwing away both money and the health of a nation doing it this way, but more because there is no such thing as "us" and "them." A human being is a human being, and we have a moral and humanitarian obligation to stop pretending that the man left for dead by the side of the road is not our problem.

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
And he said, He that shewed mercy on him.
Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

"Health" and "Care" and the lady in the library

Yesterday I met a woman. I'll call her M. She was in the library, looking stunned, looking lost, looking brave anyway. There was no one else in the library at the time but the two kids she'd brought in with her, and she and I got to talking. She'd had a terrible health scare and been in the hospital for a few days. They told her she has diabetes and if she'll lose fifty pounds, it will go away. And, I'm sure they're right. But she was on her own to do it.

Now, if you ask me, that, right there, that one lady - that's what's wrong with our system. The system we have right now is little more than a collection of autonomous individuals and financial incentives, and frankly, if financial incentives aren't really part of your life you don't have the personal power for autonomy.

Also this week, I heard a broadcast of Think Out Loud, and found out that, long before the national initiative, Oregon's been working on changing the actual system. They've got a plan ready to propose. It all sounds realistic, practical, compassionate, and fiscally responsible, and I hope hope hope they succeed at this. It will change in the nation when it begins to change state by state, I think. Godspeed, Oregon. God's blessing on you in this effort. Seriously. It needs to happen.

The Medical Home clinic in Lebanon, Oregon, is a good example of how things can work better. Dr. Rick Wopat was on the Think Out Loud broadcast, and his answers to "how does it work?" are well worth listening to.

I wish I could send M. to his clinic. (It's not even in our state. No one could send her there.) There's only so much I'm allowed to do as an employee - and I found as many resources for her as I could, and talked to her at length. What she needs in compassionate care that doesn't make her feel so alone and frightened. M. needs a behavioral therapy counselor, and a nutritionist - not one rushed, annoyed, fee-for-service doctor who's "rude" and "mean." She needs to avoid decades of expensive care by means of immediate and effective support. She needs to be seen as a person, not as a case, and if someone would work with her, she's one person who's ready to work. Now. Another few months of this kind of panic and fear and overwhelm, and she probably won't be ready anymore.

In fact, M. and I and you and everyone - we need HEALTH care ... not malady management.

Books I've been thinking about lately

My soldier will be home soon.

The other night, my husband said, "We've been putting a brave face on all of this - but I am going to be relieved when it's over."

Me too.

And she's seen and been near and heard about and dealt with the fallout from so much hideousness that I wonder ... I wonder what part of our country's burden she will deal with. What part of the warrior's sacrifice we will deal with.

See, that's the deal. Soldiers don't just walk off the stage and repair their costumes and then come back into view. While they're gone and we can't see them, they absorb into their bodies and minds a permanent burden of pain. And, as William Blake said, "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." That's the other part about being a soldier that the people at home cannot know. The narrative includes the doubting Thomas and the thrice-denying Peter. Closest friends who don't get it. Betrayal. Abandonment.

In this Eastertide, as we approach Ascension Day on Thursday, I think about the fact that Jesus used his scars as proof. Remember that? Jesus, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, came to earth, and was a helpless baby, and now he bears the scars of our pain. That's the Christian story. He who knew no sin became sin for us.

He showed Thomas the scars. See? he said. It's really me. I am not a ghost. I'm the risen Christ - look where the nails and the spear went in. He could eat with them - feast with them - talk with them - rejoice with them ... but he still held the scars in his body.

Soldiers do that. Even if they come home "without a scratch," they hold in their bodies and minds the pain - the anguish of the world. They bear it for the rest of their lives.

Lots of research has been done lately about post-traumatic growth and health. There is such a thing. I'll be looking into it. I need to know how to process this kind of pain. The story of the restoration of Peter - when Jesus asked him three times, "Peter, do you love me?" - that story is important to me today. Peter was restored. Peter turned from the sword and learned to feed sheep.

Odysseus. And Achilles. Our Lord, too. Permanently changed because of sacrifice and battle. Victory doesn't come cheap. And now I want verbiage. The book covers are linked to sites - just click.

Another good one from "my" school

It keeps happening. I'm beginning to think that some part of me knew somehow that this would be the Booklover's School. Next month, over a Friday evening and all day Saturday session (to be preceded by a reading of the text and followed by a properly done research paper), I'll take a one credit course called Interpersonal Neurobiology and Treatment of Depression. I borrowed (from the public library) the book we're going to use as the text, and I've been looking it over today. Now I know that I will buy this book, refer to this book, recommend this book, quote from this book, and keep an eye on the developments that proceed from this book and everyone referred to in it.

Honest and true, this is another real gem.

The title is underwhelming, to say the least. In fact, that's why I put it on hold at the library. I didn't think I'd want to own it, and I thought maybe once I looked at it, I'd drop the course. It's called (in stunningly boring reflection of anything that might be near it on the shelf) Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression. I know. Really, really uninteresting, right? Verrry loonggg yaaawwwwn.

But ... hm ... well, lookee here. Some of the nation's most interesting and multi-disciplinary health gurus du jour are on the back cover, singing this book's praises. That's interesting ... we've got Deepak Chopra, Christiane Northrup, Dean Ornish, Andrew Weil, Mehmet Oz ... huh. Okay, so let's look inside.

The flyleaf says that the author is "Dr. James Gordon, a Harvard Medical School-educated psychiatrist who founded and directs The Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., has been helping his patients find their way out of the darkness of depression for the past forty years." "A pioneer in integrative medicine." He "believes that depression is not an end point, a disease over which we have no control. It is a sign that our lives are out of balance, that we're stuck."

Yes, that's interesting, all right. So I start reading - start with the introduction. That's where (I've finally figured out) I want to start when I want to be introduced to the author. Did you know that? The "introduction" is the place where the author shakes your hand and tells you a bit about himself. That's where you figure out who you're dealing with. If you don't care who's talking, skip the intro. If you're going to "consider the source" in a more skeptical way (or if your instructor assigned it), read it.

So I do. And I keep reading. And I start plowing through the first chapter, and then I start saying things on a Saturday morning like, "Hey! Pause the TV for a sec. Listen to this."

Wow. At last! Someone who's been around awhile (he did his residency in 1968) has seen that the West and the East, the ancient and the modern, the biological and the psychological/spiritual, the predisposition and the precipitating event(s) are all part of this picture for wholeness and healing and wellness and a good life, well lived. The history of our nation's blithe acceptance of the "disease" (often compared to diabetes) model for depression is in here. The science (and lack thereof) behind the pharmaceutical answer is in here - and so is a proposal for a more helpful use of that option. Options, reality, the glorious resilience of the human being ... it's all in here.

I really like my school.

Experimentation

Over at the bubbling blog of author Gretchen Rubin, everyone has access to the record of all the research that has gone into her most recent book. This was just about the most publicly interactive bit of research I've ever seen. One day, I hope to follow in her footsteps and do the same sort of research, interviewing people, finding a hypothesis and testing it myself, looking up the science and the art of the thing ... this was really cool to watch as it unfolded. Her "One Minute Movies" are poignantly beautiful - and I love her list of Happiness Myths.

No. 1: Happy people are annoying and stupid. This is an automatic assumption that many people make.

No. 2: Nothing changes a person’s happiness level much.

No. 3: Venting anger relieves it.

No. 4: You’ll be happier if you insist on “the best.”

No. 5: A “treat” will cheer you up.

No. 6: Money can’t buy happiness.

No. 7: Doing “random acts of kindness” brings happiness. The emphasis here is on the word "random."

No. 8: You’ll be happy as soon as you… Falling into the "arrival fallacy" is something that many people (including me) recognize in themselves.

No. 9: Spending some time alone will make you feel better.

No. 10: The biggest myth: It’s selfish to try to be happier.

On a much smaller scale, inspired by Gretchen, I've started to experiment here - in my house - at my desk and in my day. What does it, I'd like to know? What makes a day start right, continue well, and end satisfactorily? It cannot be dependent on the "stuff" that happens in a day. That would be far, far too unpredictable and besides - I've already figured out that it's better to be a stable person than to live in a stable world.

So ... is it breakfast? It would be hard to find a habit more thoroughly documented as healthy. Everyone from WebMD to Mireille Guiliano will confirm that breakfast is essential to a good day.

Is it Morning Prayer? Some form of spiritual orientation in the upcoming day seems essential to mental and emotional health. I once asked my naturopathic doctor how on earth she manages to get through her day. All those people with all those needs - how does she stay clear from their energies? Their burdens? Meditation, she said. Every day she starts with quiet, and reminds herself of her place in the world.

For a long time, I was a bit soured on this concept - it was the "devotions" of the evangelicals that did it to me. I could no longer stand the either the highly emotional and ultimately draining experiences of the "good" days nor the blank and confusing lack of response I felt on the "bad" days. I kept looking for the right reactions - the right responses from inside my soul. Ick.

But ordinary Anglican Morning Prayer is not that sort of exercise. This equates much more closely to the meditation my doctor was doing. This is a first-of-the-day orientation within my life. Under heaven, among men, grounded in my own life. This is the daily playing of scales and practicing of arpeggios a musician does, and the spiritual equivalent of housekeeping. And it makes an enormous difference. ... So ... is that it? Is that the key to the day? (That's me in the blue dress - that's my piano behind me.)

Or ... maybe it's Julie Cameron's "morning pages" that makes the whole thing work. Lately they've been helping me ... and I wonder if they'd help more if I did these pages ... well ... you know ... in the morning. Oh, well. They work any time of the day for me. It's the writing thing I need, like I need water and air and movement and peace. For me, it's not "gotta dance," it's "gotta dash" - as in, dash off some words, scrawl, scribble, write, forge, frame, knock out, bang out, dream up, and pen. Gotta write.

The sun is all the way up now - above the fir trees on the sunrise side of the field. The day has begun. One thing's for sure. If I don't stop observing the day and start living it, it will have passed and no matter how well a day starts we never get a do over. I think I'll go make a protein smoothie and get my prayers said.

October wardrobe

So ... lemme see .... what shall I wear this fall? Oh, I know. How about a huge, hulking, black, velcroed-on boot? Not two - that would be excessive. I'll just wear the one. For the whole month of October. Nothing says Autumnal Sartorial Pinache like one hulking black boot, don't you think?

Better than a plaster cast. That's what I'm going with. Better - because I can take showers this way and not end up with sodden plaster.

I'd never even heard of an avulsion fracture before today. But that's what I've got. Three of them. It's when your tendon is too stubborn to tear, and your bones too hard to break, so your tendon pulls a piece of bone OFF! Apparently it's more common in children. And elite athletes. (Stop laughing.)

Spoon Sisters rock!!

A friend at work showed me this site yesterday. I have to pass it along to my readers. Readers, meet the Spoon Sisters. (Spoon Sisters, these are my readers. Thanks for coming.) There is so much laugh out loud, ingenious, amazing, brilliant, useful stuff on this site that I'm considering asking for a thousand dollar gift certificate. I mean, seriously. How brilliant is this? Brownies, and every piece is an edge piece!

And this is intriguing as well. I can't quite figure out what these are made of. Silicone maybe? What an interesting idea. (What do you do with them when they're all used up, I wonder? Seventh Generation makes a fabric softener sheet that's actually a sheet of brown paper and can be recycled like any other paper.)

I love the Spoon Sisters! Straining ladles, and can strainers, a "Happy Birthday" cake mold and dipping spoons, stuff for babies and parents and weddings and holidays ... it's all good. And since they've dared to sell it (and Anish Sheth, M.D., a gastroenterology fellow at Yale has dared to write it in the first place), and because I really do think this sort of information can be helpful, and because I laughed out loud when I saw it ... well ... here it is: Oh, c'mon. That's funny. And useful. And funny. (I think I'm always going to be eight years old.)

Bump, Stop, Yield

Well, apparently there is a benefit of aging. I did not know this could happen, but it is happening, so, logically, it can, eh? (Hm. "Eh?" I must be becoming a Canadian after my recent frustration with the medical world in the USA.)

The benefit of aging is that the frustrations and vicissitudes (I love that word), the various setbacks and challenges, the "changes and chances of this mortal life" are speed bumps I still have to drive over sometimes, but either my suspension is better than it used to be or I'm a better driver or the bumps wear down over time. Maybe it's a combination of all three things. Maybe after awhile we realize that we can be calm when a bump is coming because we'll be able to be okay as we go over and when we get to the other side we'll still be driving. Whatever it is, today I have and can see that I have:

1. Control over my own medical decisions (somehow, waiting until Friday and taking care of it myself feels right - I feel safe - I'm okay) I stopped at the sign, but now I'm going again.

2. An ankle bone. That has a lot to do with the feeling of being okay. I can see one of my ankle bones again, and my really nasty bruising is turning green and yellow. Now it's not just a joke foot, it's a joke Halloween foot. It's lovely, I assure you. (If someone made a painting out of the exact colors of my foot right now, people would view it and feel a bit ill and not know why.)

3. School assignments. I talked to my instructor yesterday, and now I have everything I need so that I can get on with my study while my multi-hued foot is propped up.

4. Gainful employment. This injury came at a really bad time. I've got hours and hours scheduled at the library this month, and there are training days for the rest of the staff and there are staff members out of town, and so they'll even take me all lame and weak and feeble. (phew!) I hated losing out on the hours, and I really squirmed at saying "no" after I'd already said "yes" and I do love the people I work with. They're so nice to me.

Yesterday I felt like a helpless child again. I really did. The bullying adults were implacable. I could not get answers or help or even simple understanding from anyone. Asking questions that do not have answers already on the forms ... well, it's not done, that's all. It's just not done. (The insurance phone girl's perfunctory, "I understand your frustration," was one of the most aggravating social lies I've heard in a long time.)

But today I don't care anymore. I'm a grownup again, and I'll choose my next few moves because grownups get to do that. I'll also vote for ANY CHANGE to the current insurance and medical office system because ANY CHANGE is at least getting the thing to move or crack or wobble a bit, and ANY CHANGE makes it possible to make more changes.

By the way, do you know the one thing law makers aren't willing to do? The one thing that would probably make all the difference we need to make for a long time with our system? They aren't willing to insist that all insurance companies be run as non-profits. That one change alone would make such a huge difference, we'd hardly recognize ourselves. T. R. Reid is probably right. We probably will need to have a one state at a time example set before anything big will happen, but if we made the insurance companies non-profit, made it necessary for them to cover everyone, we'd have nearly solved all our payment/fee/escalating costs problem. We really would.

I'm a better driver now than I was in my youth. Speed bumps don't panic me (or, not for long anyway), stops can be accomplished and the journey resumed, decisions can be made at crossroads, and narrow bridges can be traversed. I can even find my way out of dead ends if I happen to turn down one.

On our first date, my husband turned down a dead end, and as he made the circle in the street and started back out again, he said, "I've always wanted to know what was down this street." The thing is ... it was not just a joke to cover one of several awkward moments in that marvelous day. Even when he didn't know a street existed before he finds himself on it, he does want to know what's down there. Not all who wander are lost - but it is okay to get lost sometimes. I'm finally becoming a good enough driver not to panic about it. I've always wanted to know what was down this street.

But I don't think so

It might be possible for me to be more angry at and frustrated with the "health" care system in this country right now, but I don't think so.

We do not have a system that cares for health. We have a system that cares for bottom lines, bureaucratic form-filling, and number crunching. The right hand not only doesn't know what the left hand is doing, it has more arms than anyone knows and they're all oblivious of the others.

We have a system that makes me afraid to go to the doctor when I have either broken or sprained my ankle - I don't know which I've done, because I have yet to get an appointment with a doctor. I now have an appointment for Friday, which is one week after the injury. I did not go to the emergency room because I was not dying, and I did not (and do not) think the thing's broken, but I have no way of knowing that until it's been x-rayed. And so why don't I just go get it x-rayed? Or, there are a lot of reasons for that. Here's a partial list.

1. Emergency room visits are expensive. The co-pay is $125, which I happened not to have in my pocket last Friday.

2. Emergency room visits for non-life-threatening injuries are time consuming in the extreme (not that this is much different from any other form of waiting room in any other form of medical office functioning within the AMA)

3. I was not home when it happened - making a logistics problem as well as an insurance tangle.

4. You can't just go get it x-rayed unless a doctor writes orders for it. So, the choice is wait for an appointment and get orders, or go to the emergency room. I chose to wait.

5. There is no way to know how much out of pocket money I might spend on this project, and we are already paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars in unanticipated medical expenses for a test the doctor ordered and the "insurance" approved - but no one could tell us how much that would cost either.

Yes, yes, we asked. Insurance has to approve. Great. So ... did they? No one bothered to call to let us know that either. Yes. They approved. Great. So I had the test. And? And I got a bill from the other side of the country, from a doctor I'd never heard of. I thought it was a scam! But no, that's where the guy who reads the test has his billing done. And that was a separate bill. The hospital got a chunk as well. The doctor doesn't make the appointment, the doctor's receptionist doesn't "even know how much they charge over there," and the people at the hospital will do whatever the doctor ordered, and the insurance doesn't know how much the hospital, doctor, or test reader will charge ... but whatever it ends up being, I have to pay the bill.

No other industry does business this way -- or, not legally, at least. Just imagine taking your car to the shop. "It doesn't work right," you say. "Okay," the guy says. "I'll do whatever I think needs to be done, and you'll pay 30% of that. That be okay with you?" Oh, sure. You'd agree to that, right? He has no way to tell you what the bill might be. But you have to agree to pay a third of it.

I've just spent the morning on the phone, trying to figure out how to handle the fact that my ankle was injured in a fall. As usual,

1. I have to be approved for the expense for the insurance to pay anything.
2. I called the insurance people. How much do I have to pay?
3. It depends on what the doctor orders. You pay a third of whatever the doctor orders. How much might that be? There's no way of knowing that.

If my ankle weren't the reason my right foot is currently the size of a joke foot, I would now take a very brisk walk to work off some of this steam. I hate dealing with medical people and insurance people - especially when all they can tell me is that they don't know anything at all about what someone else might decide or what those decisions might cost me.

The "system" (which is really just a wadded-up and for-profit mess made of every system there is, including the one where people go without care - you know... like in Bangladesh or the wilds of Africa?) is a system that does not work for me. We are employed. We have insurance. And I'm scared to go to the doctor. So - our system? Maybe it could be more broken - but I don't think so.

Better, Cheaper, Fairer (and mostly, fairer!)

The most good sense I have heard from anyone talking about the health care issue has come from T. R. Reid, in a program called "Can We Really Fix U.S. Health Care?" We recently saw this program on the LINK television network.

Reid's most recent book (which I will be buying, just so I can vote with my 20 bucks in support of what he is saying) is called The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.

This is an excerpt from an article he wrote for The Washington Post.

As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.

I've traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:

1. It's all socialized medicine out there.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

International Babywearing Week

Oh, the problems that could be solved if babies everywhere could have this! And oh, the irony in the "first world's" wealth that separates us from the children.

Click on the picture to go to the site. There's some very happy-making stuff there.

Keeping it Real

I've been thinking.

I've been thinking about food - and Ideas - about education and eating habits - about health care as a social justice issue and health care as an individual responsibility.

I've been thinking about the way my own tastes have morphed from Kraft Singles on white bread spread with Miracle Whip (what a name! "miracle" "whip"!) to crumbs in the bed and stinky cheese. (Do you think that blond child with the red ribbon pigtails looks slightly manic?)

I'm not that far removed from American culture at large. My morphing has been within the context of the culture's morphing, I think. In the 70's, I packed lunches for me and my two brothers on school mornings, and we ate Kraft Singles on white bread. That was the decade that also included Spiced Tea Mix (chemically invented Tang, metallic tasting instant tea, and spices that never really dissolve) in the mom's club cookbook and for sale in cute containers in the fundraisers at our Christian school. Tang tea and Kraft singles are things my children wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

This past week I heard my 23 year old son telling his father about his very regrettable decision to eat the kind of Kraft microwavable Mac-n-cheese that only needs water added to it. He was at school, and it was the only thing in the "pod" to eat, so he made some - and threw most of it out. He preferred semi-starvation to the fake food. This is the same kid, by the way, who used to eat the boxed Kraft macaroni and cheese with a lot of delight. It's not like I fed him leaves and twigs when he was little.

Also during the 70's, along with the "cheese food" and white bread, my mother also had an Adele Davis phase, and apparently that was the one that stuck with me. Let's Have Healthy Children sat on the kitchen counter, and all the talk about getting enough protein started during those years. We ate some weird food - but mostly, we started to eat more natural foods. It must have happened during an impressionable moment for me. I need things to be real - things like food.

You can still get Kraft singles, and that microwavable mac-n-cheese (which even has a fake-word name) is not only available, it's a newly invented "food" we didn't have in the days of Five Can Casserole recipes. Obviously, the fake, invented, "convenient," and heavily marketed fads du jour are not gone from our national Gotta Have It lists.

But along the way, with Julia Child breaking barriers for cooks at home (really, she started the ball rolling in a lot of ways), we have gathered up such notions as the 100 Mile Diet, the Slow Food ideas and methods, and most recently, authors writing philosophically and practically about Real Food and the reason the planet and we the people need to pay attention to the dilemma we've gotten ourselves into.

I think our country's tastes in food has paralleled our metamorphosis in education as well. In the 80's, most states in the union not only frowned on home schooling, for instance, they would actually declare a child not in the mainstream as "truant," and proceed according to the law. It took a lot of overt, conscious, and sustained effort for the country to wake up to the idea that real education could happen in real homes for real families -- and then for most of the population to realize that you didn't have to be a denim jumper wearing hippy freak or a religious zealot to school your kids in an unconventional way. Now colleges recruit homeschooled kids. It has turned out that kids who aren't constantly interrupted while they are trying to think become young adults who can think - and who enjoy doing just that.

But it's not just home schooling - it's magnet schools and alternative schools and satellite schools. The once exotic notion of the correspondence school - Calvert is the firstborn of this creation - has become just one more option for people who opt out of the mainstream of pre-packaged, plastic-wrapped, cheesy brain "food" that nourishes nearly no one while giving the impression of being part of a healthy meal.

And what has happened? In food and in school? The breaking out and liveliness of the various options have had the backwash effect of contaminating the sterile main stream of stuff and thereby reviving it. In schools we have more and more organic, real, and sensible ideas about children and the information they gather; in grocery store chains we have store brand organic options. The medical world is going through a similar integration (there is a Monday cancer patient shift for Classical Chinese Medicine at the naturopathic college - complementary medicine for the conventional and unconventional health seekers), and even in the worlds of print publishing and music, the genre blend is making it more and more difficult to tell the difference between disparate things that used to seem as if they were worlds apart. (This also makes it more difficult to shelve books at the library, by the way. I'm not saying it's all good.)

So here's what I think.

I think that it is rarely a good idea to follow the loony fringe. The compelling and consuming agenda blinds people to reality. But we'd also better never shut them up. I think the ideas at the edge work like wild yeast. Sure, it can lead to rot. But it can also make it possible to ferment things all the way to yum. As a culture, we are learning how to make and use the cultures. We're learning to "eat food that spoils, and eat it before it does." We're learning to keep it real.

Idea for health care reform

It's a two-parter:

1. Abandon "fee for service" and its "perverse incentive" to see patients as units of income, making it lucrative to see more people instead of taking enough time with each one;

2. Get creative, look to other models, think about where the incentives go.

And this is a very interesting experiment!

Minnesota Experiment Puts Patient Health First

by David Welna

Were Gaul being paid by the number of patients he sees, as most doctors are, it might not have been worthwhile for him to sit and listen at length to his patient. But Gaul and all the other doctors at the Eagan clinic are now on salaries and feel more at liberty to consult with each other about patients.

Surprising as it is ...

If you knew me in the olden days, you might now wonder if the aliens captured me and put a different brain in my head. But the fact is that I agree with the things Bill Moyers says on this clip. I agree that there are some Ideals which are legitimate American issues of social justice.

We ought not to have water fountains inaccessible to some racial groups or voting booths inaccessible to women. We ought not to have humans owned by other humans, and we ought not to have some people barred from education. We ought to have liberty and justice for all. "A good business model" is not a good model for families, churches, or medicine, and the profit motive is a pernicious and insidious cancer in places where the care of people's bodies and souls are at stake. A country compassionate enough to send billions of dollars to alleviate suffering around the globe ought to be a country compassionate enough to make sure her own people do not pay for health with bankruptcy.
This gives me lot of hope. Maybe store brand organic products is as good a sign as it seems to be. Maybe the 100-mile Diet challenge is having ripple effects, and maybe it's a good sign that popular cinema includes a movie about the Queen of Good Food at Home, Julia Child. Maybe we're going to figure it out. Maybe soon.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Chicken Little is not a reliable source

A very interesting report this morning. I highly recommend listening to the whole thing here. There is no way to tell if fear will once again swallow reason in its white noise and strobe light, but maybe this will be the moment when we figure a few things out. Maybe we ought to act like humans and not like threatened lionesses who cannot understand that everything is okay. Maybe. So far, we aren't doing too well. So far, we have let fear keep us from reason.

"It's really a case of deja vu," he says. "You hear in today's debate echoes of the past that extend all the way to the early part of the 20th century. And I think the reason that people use fear again and again is that it's effective. It's worked to stop health reform in the past. And so they're going to try and use it in the present."

History Of Scare Tactics

Oberlander says opponents used scare tactics the very first time the idea of national health insurance was broached — around 1915 — by tying would-be reformers to the nation's then-greatest international threat.

"They said that national health insurance was a plot by the German emperor to take over the United States," he says.

The next effort to remake the health system came during the late 1940s. This time the opposition, led by the American Medical Association, exploited the newest fears. "They said if we adopted national health insurance, the Red army would be marching through the streets of the U.S.; they said this was the first step toward communism," Oberlander says.

By the time the Clinton administration took on the health effort, the power of the American Medical Association was fading. But now a new opponent took its place — the health insurance industry. It ran ads using an ordinary looking couple, named Harry and Louise, to raise doubts among middle-class Americans about how the Clinton plan might hurt rather than help them.

Says Oberlander, "The opponents have changed over time; the tactic of relying on fear and scaring Americans has not."

The Science Of Fear

But exactly why is fear such an effective tactic? Simple biology, says Joseph LeDoux, a professor of neuroscience at New York University.

It turns out that fear is a very primitive response, and "once fear is aroused in your brain, it tends to take over and dominate," LeDoux says. A brain paralyzed by fear is unable to think other things through.

Chicken Little was invested in his viewpoint too. He was just wrong, that's all. The sky wasn't really falling. But a whole bunch of others believed him.

Chicken Little was in the woods.
A seed fell on his tail.

He met Henny Penny and said,
"The sky is falling.
I saw it with my eyes.
I heard it with my ears.
Some of it fell on my tail."

He met Turkey Lurkey, Ducky Lucky,
and Goosey Loosey.
They ran to tell the king.

They met Foxy Loxy.

They ran into his den,
And they did not come out again.